Five Times Teddy Lupin Made a First Impression
by BookkeeperThe
Summary: Nearly everyone knows who Teddy Lupin is before they meet him. Or at least, they think they do.


**Notes: mostly canon-compliant, except for the fact that it's very important to me that Harry raises Teddy. Also ignores some aspects of post-series interviews/pottermore/etc. Compliant with my other post-series fics. Begins a few days after the Battle of Hogwarts and spans the time until Teddy is a young adult.**

 **Warnings: mentions of canonical character death, very mild language, allusions to canonical child abuse/neglect, canonical Knockturn Alley grossness (eyeballs, if that's a specific issue for anyone). A baby. If there's anything else, let me know.**

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Molly Weasley was a mother. She had just lost a son. She was numb and hurting with a raw and screaming pain she didn't think would ever go away. She would be damned if that kept her from looking after her other children; blood or otherwise.

"Ginny, have you seen Ron and Harry? Or Hermione?"

"They went on an errand," Ginny said vaguely, without looking up from her book. Molly's little girl, barely of age, and so much leaner and tougher and more scarred than she had ever wanted her to need to be. But still strong. Still healing. And still evading questions that she very well knew required specific answers.

"What kind of errand?" Molly pressed, hands settling onto her hips and an edge creeping into her voice.

"Just an errand."

"Ginevra Weasley – !"

" _Mum._ " Ginny met her eyes, so full of fire and steel, so little like the girl who had hidden from the boy she fancied, who had cried when her brothers left for school. Molly faltered. Ginny softened. "Mum. It's nothing dangerous, I promise. You'll see when they get back."

"And when will that be?" Molly asked, conceding.

"I don't know. Probably about –"

 _Crack._

"Now, I guess."

Molly hurried for the back door, feeling Ginny rise behind her.

"Ronald Weasley, if you think you can just –"

The admonition dissolved on her tongue as the door swung open and she took in the scene. The three of them, as always, looking slightly worse for wear than they had that morning. Hermione, with a worried crease in her brow that hadn't smoothed for days; Ron, eyes red and damp as they had been more often than not; Harry, face pale and dry like he didn't know how to begin to grieve. And cradled carefully but inexpertly in Harry's arms, a baby.

Molly watched the groggy infant's hair shift slowly from black to ginger, and thought, _Teddy Lupin._ She watched Harry try to press him even closer to his chest, and thought, _his godson._ She felt a startling rush of anger.

"Mum –" Ron tried to say, but at that same moment Molly found her voice.

"Harry, dear, you don't have to –" _You're only a child, how dare they expect you to raise one, how dare they make you feel responsible_ – "I'm sure Andromeda –"

"She doesn't want him," Harry said bluntly. "She looks at him and sees them. She'll end up hating him for it."

"I'm sure with time . . ." Molly began, but Harry's jaw tightened and his eyes flickered. Behind him, Ron found something fascinating on the ground and the crease between Hermione's eyebrows deepened.

"If you don't want us to stay here, that's fine. But I'm not just going to leave him somewhere he's not wanted." And there was no crack in his voice, no tremble in his lip, but Molly still heard the hot and painful undercurrent, the unspoken end of the sentence.

 _Not like they did to me._

Teddy began to whimper, a panicked look flashed across Harry's face, and Molly's anger melted as quickly as it had arrived.

"Of course not. And don't you even think about going anywhere else; we'll look after him right here. Why don't you all come in out of the heat; he's probably just warm, poor thing. Ginny, go find Bill – he should remember what sort of formula to get – then take some Muggle money and go into town for supplies."

She ushered them inside, gently correcting Harry's grip – "There you go, dear, support his head" – but making no move to separate him from Teddy. Children, just children, orphans of two wars, but they had each other.

And they had her.

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Draco Malfoy was not what anyone would call a graceful loser, nor was he particularly adept at landing on his feet. He had been raised to be demanding, not resourceful, which was not a terribly useful skillset when one's carefully constructed world of power and wealth came crashing down around one's ears.

But he was a Slytherin, and not quite as useless as he had come to fear. So here he was, at twenty-three, tending shop in Knockturn Alley with, if not pleasure, at least a certain subdued satisfaction. He enjoyed keeping things neat and organized, and smoothly sidestepping the tricks of expert hagglers, and being around people who regarded him mostly with indifference rather than outright hatred – or worse, pity.

He also (he admitted only to himself) took a certain juvenile delight in selling the wares that his parents had always forbade him from touching, or even looking at too closely.

And at times like now, on a cold winter morning with the sun barely up and the streets nearly empty, he particularly enjoyed the peace and quiet.

"Hello!"

Draco nearly slipped sideways from his chair, but managed to prevent it with only a minimum of undignified flailing. He stared at the source of the greeting; a pair of bright brown eyes stared right back at him over the counter.

"Er," said Draco.

He glanced around. The rest of the shop was empty. He looked back at the child, who was still watching him.

"Where are your parents?" he asked at last. Knockturn Alley, while not quite the cesspool of depravity most wizards seemed to imagine it as, was no place for a child to be wandering around alone. This one didn't look more than six.

"Don't got any," the child replied with a shrug, backing away to gaze around with interest. Most of the more dangerous items were secured behind glass or charms, but Draco got to his feet anyway, ready to deter small hands were they to reach for anything ill-advised.

"Your guardian, then," Draco amended impatiently.

"Busy with the baby," the child said, moving towards a glass jar of snake eyes and swaying back and forth so that they followed the movement. "Said I could look around, s'long as I didn't go far."

"And where was that?" Draco asked, rolling his eyes.

"Mmmm . . . Eeyelops, I think. With the owls. Are these alive?"

"Not really. Look, your . . . whoever is probably worried about you. You should get back to them before they get upset."

"'S only been a little bit," the child argued, and then abruptly turned and fixed Draco with another eerily bright, almost amber stare. "Your hair is nice," the child declared. "I can make mine like that, see?"

Draco watched with dawning horror as the dark mop of hair atop the child's head faded to pale blonde and then brightened to platinum, straightening as it did so.

". . . oh," he breathed, as the little tyke grinned at him cheerfully. He recognized that grin. "Oh Merlin's _balls,_ " he groaned, seriously debating the benefits of grabbing the nearest not-technically- _cursed_ -per-se object and take his chances with the afterlife.

"That's not nice to say," the child rebuked, and Draco cursed again, but this time under his breath.

"Your guardian," he said, very calmly, once he could keep is voice steady, "He wouldn't happen to be Harry Potter, would he?"

"Yeah. Harry. Hey, are you okay?"

Draco was pinching the bridge of his nose, and he expected he was even paler than usual.

"Stay where you are and don't touch anything," he ordered. He waited until the child nodded uncertainly before snatching up his cloak. He checked the backroom to confirm that Thaddeus, the owner and nominally his boss, was still passed out drunk, and then returned to find the child exactly where he had left him.

"Come with me," he said shortly, heading briskly towards the door.

The child – Teddy _bloody_ Lupin, as was precisely Draco's luck – didn't move.

"Not s'posed to go with strangers," Teddy Lupin said stubbornly, and Draco sighed.

"So don't go with me. You go back to your – to . . . Harry, and I'll go with you, to make sure you get back safe. Okay?"

Teddy regarded him with narrowed eyes.

". . . okay," he said at last.

"Okay," Draco agreed, and held the door open. "After you."

Still eying him suspiciously, Teddy edged past him and set off confidently down the street, thankfully in the correct direction. Draco followed, hand in his pocket and white-knuckled around his wand, eyes sweeping the street for potential threats. If he didn't get the boy back in one piece, Potter was liable to do something highly unpleasant.

The child, he noted, was keeping out of reach of the drunks and hags lurking in the shadows, and of him. The action was obvious and deliberate, with no finesse or instinct behind it. Not a foolish child, or a sheltered one, but used to safety. It was no more than Draco should have expected, he supposed.

As soon as they rounded the corner into Diagon Alley, the commotion was obvious. The street was practically deserted, but every one of the shoppers and quite a few of the shopkeepers had formed a small crowd outside of Eeyelops. Over their nervous murmurs, Draco could hear an infant wailing, and another voice, sharp and familiar. Despite the obvious conclusion, it took him a moment to reach it, and as soon as he did, he knew why.

He had never heard Potter sound panicked before.

Teddy had slowed to a halt, looking apprehensive, and Draco felt an unexpected flash of sympathy. _Time to face the music, kid._

He gripped Teddy's small shoulder, half to spur the child into motion, half in some irrational attempt to keep a keyed-up Potter from cursing him on sight. He swallowed hard, and forced himself to move them both forward. As they approached the distracted knot of people, he began to make out words.

". . . two _seconds_ for Merlin's sake if anything happened –"

There was also a gentle, elderly voice – Florence Fortescue? – trying to sound calming with a worried current underneath.

"Now, now, Mr. Potter; I'm sure your boy is quite alright."

Draco pushed his way through the crowd, keeping Teddy in front of him and only flushing slightly at the whispers and eyes that followed him.

"Potter."

Potter startled and spun towards him, face white, eyes wide, grip almost suffocating on the dark-haired baby on his hip, whose cries had faded into tired whimpers. His eyes immediately fell on Teddy, and the next thing Draco knew Harry Potter had fallen to his knees in front of him, sweeping the child into a one-armed hug and burying his face in his hair. Draco examined the cobblestones at his feet and tried not to hear the snatches of muffled rebuke and reassurance that filtered up to him.

". . . God, Teddy, don't you ever . . . could've . . . love you so much."

"Sorry, 'm sorry," Teddy was saying, in tears now and not nearly as adept at keeping his voice low. "I was just looking. But the man said I should come back, so I did, but I didn't mean to – I thought you said I could look around –"

But Potter was straightening again at the first mention of a stranger, the familiar, guarded look slipping back into place. It only faltered for a moment when he finally took in who he was looking at.

"Malfoy."

"Potter."

Potter examined him, pulling Teddy close to his side. His bright green eyes were sharp and calculating, but not hostile; not full of childish rage and loathing. They weren't schoolboys anymore. Potter's hand was steady and firm on his godson's shoulder, and Draco's stomach didn't twist too much when Potter said,

"Thank you."

And Teddy Lupin smiled tentatively up at him with damp eyes, and Draco swallowed his pride, and smiled back.

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Minerva McGonagall has had many, many students. She has known each one by their name and their face and their ability to transfigure a hedgehog into an acceptable pincushion, and she has known a great many of them by their particular teenage troubles, petty and profound and that odd conflation of the two which only adolescence can produce.

So many children grown and gone and lost to illness and time and, far too often, to war; and though she does not consider herself a sentimental woman, it becomes more difficult each year not to view the pure- and half-bloods who walk into her classroom as amalgams of those who came before them. The studious and the mischievous, the talented and the unfortunate, the kind and the cruel. She knows that the day it becomes impossible to view them as anything else will be the day she will allow her portrait to be hung beside Albus' and quietly retire to attend to other, less delicate growing things.

When Teddy Lupin walks into her classroom for the first time, eyes bright and eager, her breath nearly catches. There is Nymphadora Tonks in the hue of his hair, and Remus Lupin in the line of his brow. There is even Harry Potter in the way he carries his bag, and Ginny Weasley in the way he drops into his chair.

But he looks up, and he grins at her with his tongue caught between his teeth.

And he doesn't have his mother's cheer or his father's worry; doesn't have Harry's wary edge or Ginny's hardened walls; but he has something bright and burning and all his own, and she thinks,

 _God help anyone who thinks this child is anyone but himself._

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Ai Dursley had met her husband's cousin Harry exactly twice. As she recalled he was a small man, Dudley's age, very polite, a little awkward. He was also a little . . . odd. A little jumpy, a little out of his depth with what she considered normal interactions. Dudley had told her, briefly and shamefacedly, what their childhood had been like. That explained some of it. The rest . . .

She smoothed the piece of thick, old-fashioned paper with shaking hands for what felt like the thousandth time.

 _Dear Miss Dursley,_

 _We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry . . ._

Well. She supposed that this explained the rest.

She jumped a little at the sound of Dudley hanging up the phone.

"He said he'll be by. Apparently they normally send someone to explain, but they must've reckoned since I grew up with him . . ."

Ai nodded, and Dudley placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. The touch was both heavy and hesitant, completely, one hundred per cent Dudley.

"You alright?"

She shook her head, not in denial, just – she didn't know. She didn't understand any of this.

Dudley cleared his throat.

"He said he may bring Teddy. He's the only one of his kids that's at the – at Hogwarts."

"Teddy," Ai echoed, still too numb to bother wracking her memory. Harry sent them a card every Christmas, but his family was so large and sprawling . . .

"His, uh . . . godson, I think," Dudley said, but he was frowning with the effort too. "Hang on –"

He went to the sitting room, and she could hear him rummaging in the drawers of the hutch.

"There we go," he said, returning to the kitchen and placing a photo in front of her. "That one."

He was pointing to a young teen, maybe fourteen or fifteen. The boy was thin, in the stretched-out way of sudden growth spurts, and nearly as tall as his godfather. His head was shaved except for one great turquoise wave that started at the crown of his head and swooped forward to fall into his laughing amber eyes. Piercings glinted in his ears and his lip.

"Your parents would hate him," Ai commented, and Dudley grinned at her, recognizing it for the seal of approval that it was.

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Penelope Clearwater had been in office for exactly one week. She had very official robes and a very official desk and very official special-order parchment and she did not feel anything at all like the Minister of Magic.

Well, all right. She sometimes felt a little like the Minister of Magic. Especially when her very official assistant stuck his head into her office and said, "Minister, your ten o'clock is here."

Oh. Yes. Her ten o'clock. Kingsley had warned her about these two: Teddy Lupin, the activist who had burned the werewolf registry, and Victoire Weasley, the lawyer who had helped him get away with it. She set her shoulders, smoothed her face into what she hoped was a look of professional politeness, and said, "Send them in."

Her very official office door swung open, admitting a tall young man with a lion's set to his jaw, and an even taller young woman with a snake's smile on her lips. There was a palpable shift in the air. It felt like change.

Penelope settled into her very official chair, and allowed herself a small, secret smile.

 _It's about damn time._


End file.
